The National are in the “gardening phase” of writing new material

nme.com:

The National have said that they are in a “very creative space” and are in the “gardening phase” of writing new material.The band dropped two albums in 2023 – ‘The First Two Pages Of Frankenstein‘ and ‘Laugh Track‘ – but this hasn’t stopped new ideas from gestating.“There’s a lot of music, so that means a lot of new music for us to play,” bassist Scott Devendorf told NME at Glastonbury. “We’ve really tried to mix up the setlist a lot and try to be more dynamic in that way just because it’s interesting for everyone.”Asked if there’s more music to come from that universe, Matt Berninger said: “No, we kind of purged ourselves.

Once we started writing again, I wrote almost everything that was in the folders and made a song out of everything. Now the folders are filling up.

I’ve been writing a lot, but I think we’re just gonna take it nice and slow. The garden is full of seeds. But we don’t know when it’s gonna start to bloom or anything like that.

We’re in a very creative space – we’re in a gardening phase. Gardening at night!”Watch our video interview with the band above.Elsewhere in the interview, Berninger explained why he doesn’t like knowing what will be on the band’s setlist for the night. “In not knowing, every time it’s like a new flavoured gum ball and I get to take that little red pill and go to that song in a new way every time.